Wilder Proposal Seeks To Run State More Efficiently

May 04, 1990|By BOB KEMPER Staff Writer

RICHMOND — Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who spent his first months in office trying to establish the credentials of a fiscal conservative, announced Thursday he was seeking ways to streamline state government.

Wilder told a group of state government executives that "Project Streamline" is an attempt to "increase efficiency in state government."

"Project Streamline will provide each of us the opportunity to rethink our priorities and to trim or eliminate unnecessary or lower priority programs," Wilder told the Virginia Executive Institute Alumni Association. "Yet we will continue to provide the highest level of service."

Wilder's streamlining project will involve having his cabinet secretaries review the agencies they run to look for ways to economize, said his spokeswoman, Laura Dillard.

"What we'll try to do is try to reduce duplication," Dillard said. "We don't have specific goals established. ... The governor spent the last 100 days or so talking about financial responsibility, and this is an outgrowth of that."

During his address, Wilder told the group "it may be our efforts will not show results in our time. That is not important."

Afterward, Wilder defended his approach, saying that the government executives were in the best position to determine where economies can be made. "It's more important to make sure your operation is running smoothly, as any corporation would. We can do it."

"It may not even be measurable in four years," he said. "I would ask my cynics: What would you have in place of that?"

Two of Wilder's cabinet secretaries contacted after the speech praised the governor's proposal.

"I think people are anxious to see government run the way it is supposed to run, more efficiently," said Larry Framme, secretary of economic development.

Secretary of the Commonwealth Pam Womack said, "I think what he is doing is a real good approach. We need to look at what work has already been done ... and start there rather than re-creating."

Wilder is making the potential streamlining part of his New Mainstream, a theme of his administration espousing a philosophical mix of penny pinching and social conscience.

"If an agency is paddling outside the mainstream, we must pull it in," Wilder said. "For agencies that are trying to bring their mission into the mainstream, we must assist them. We are a team moving in the same direction." Wilder told the state executives that innovation would be the key to the project's success, creating "solutions never envisioned by other governments."

Some of the solutions they may come up with, however, could be derived from government studies done as long as 20 years ago under other administrations. Wilder wants his cabinet secretaries to review those studies to determine what good advice in them has not been followed.

"Vision will be key to innovation, and innovation will be the key ingredient to effective management of Virginia government operations for this decade and the next century," Wilder said.

No deadline has been set for the cabinet secretaries to report back to Wilder with their findings, Dillard said, although they may be complete by the end of the year.

Wilder had discussed the proposal with his secretaries during a cabinet meeting Monday, although Dillard said it had been talked about internally for about a month.